By VTHoop on

Years ago, I built a website from scratch using PHP and mySQL. I'm kind of picky in how the whole structure of the site and data was setup, so I took that approach. I'd like to rebuild that website now, but I'd rather not build the front end from scratch.

I don't know too much about CMS technologies and am not the best about learning what it can do without actually getting my hands on it. From anybody with experience, what is the feasibility of creating something like that. Again the biggest things to me would be the customization of the data itself:

I would create a schedule of games. Games would be assigned to specific dates and locations.
Users would be assigned to games as attending or not.
Allowing a user to create a "Game Food"
"Game Food" would be assigned to a specific game, a specific category of meal, assigned to the person who created it.

These are the types of things that I would be concerned about. Is this type of flexibility available?

Again, sorry if the question is dumb. I just don't know too much about the ease of flexibility within these CMS tools.

Thanks.

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

If you want to customize the architecture at the database level, and not abstract it out, then any CMS is going to cause you no end of headbanging grief. That's just not what they're for. You're probably better off using a framework like symfony or laravel or django if you prefer python.

You can definitely create the type of data organization you describe with drupal and likely without writing a single line of code. It is by far the most flexible and powerful CMF out there. You can even use custom entities with properties rather than fields if you prefer more control. But you'll never have total control at the DB level unless you pretty much ignore the API and the system altogether. What would be the point?

The entire purpose of using a CMF like Drupal is to allow you to focus on the functionality and the relationships between the data and FREE you from the minutiae of dealing with the db. Fighting that is likely just going to lead to endless frustration and wasted time.

imo if you're not going to fully embrace Drupal, just bespoke your own.